This alleged trilemma only exists, because we're fixated on coal as dispatchable power, and because of an ideological imperative to privatize the very pillars that support the economy! And tantamount to handing Dracula, the keys to the blood bank?

Nuclear power has no smokestacks the spew carbon or many other pollutants into the environment. So nuclear power is carbon free.

If rolled out as molten salt thorium, will be CHEAPER THAN COAL! Molten salt reactors, self regulate, operate at atmospheric pressure and are walk away safe. And reliable!

So there you have in a nutshell! RELIABLE, AFFORDABLE, CARBON FREE ENERGY!

We have enough thorium to power the world for 700 years, here in Oz. And rolled out as not for profit public amenity? Prices as low as $1.98 are doable.

So there's the staring you in the face, trifecta!

Which means the only real problem is this obsession with coal/privatization/ ruling stuff out, untried! And prevented by quite deliberate policy and our own, thou shalt not, regulations!

Yes we will need to mine some coal, but only if we use Aussie ingenuity and the single step steel smelting, utilizing arc furnaces and Automation.

Which will, particularly, if we enable co-ops to operate this industry, allow us to dominate the market!

Even more so if we ship it in nuclear powered shipping we own and operate, as floating co-ops! These things make money!

Nuclear power can and has used seawater to produce endlessly sustainable hydrocarbon based fuels! And not hypothetical!

All that stands in the way, are hidebound morons obsessed with welding power and divide and rule, nation destroying politics!

When as never before we need bipartisan pragmatism and future vision!

Business as usual, marked by endless obfuscation, prevarication and tremendous timidity, have produced the Australia we see today!

How much more of his crap are we going to have to cop, before we put the "Kranken" back in his box?

Just do it! Or get out of the way! Alan B.

Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 20 September 2017 7:52:13 AM

RETS are the reason for the high electricity prices. We cannot have a reliable power supply without coal or nuclear. Our politicians are too stupid to see this. There is no need for pages of bumf to explain this.

Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 20 September 2017 8:10:08 AM

This Author's idea of dispatchable power, relies on gas? True, gas is cleaner than coal and allegedly produces 40% less carbon pollution than coal? We have or had copious gas supplies?

And still have, if you factor in untapped CSG or fracked shale gas?

What none of these advocates will tell you, is that fracked shale gas also releases copious radon, which is quite radioactive and arguably the major source of our (over) exposure to "NOR" naturally occurring radiation? 80-90%?

With around 4% coming from coal fired smoke stacks? Around 1 % coming from nuclear power? X Rays, air travel and granite clad buildings accounting for most of the rest?

That said, we could use C.S.G., if we included, desalinization dialysis desalination, to turn any salt water brought to the surface into endlessly reliable, cost effective irrigation, as a win/win outcome!

With electrolysis deployed to convert the salt product into salable sodium, as the metal, and chlorine as the gas. And suitable for numerous industrial applications!

That said, we could do the same with often less saline seawater! And using the same technology, for four times less than conventional desalination! Or ten times less again if we use walk away safe, ultra reliable, molten salt thorium as our preferred power source!

There's probably a good reason why the first nuclear reactor was patented by an industrial chemist! Alvin Weinberg? And the same guy presided over the first working prototype, working, walk away safe, molten salt, thorium reactor! Knowing as he did, all the problems inherent in and complexity of solid fueled reactors!

And something to mull over, as theoretical physicists set themselves up as nuclear experts? And purport to advise the decision makers on the best course to steer? Even as they bag professionally despised chemists? Alan B.

Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 20 September 2017 8:33:27 AM

Green groups regularly trot out opinion polls that give 75% approval ratings for renewable energy. I suspect many respondents are secretly asking for bigger rebates for home solar. Even our ABC tells us that batteries will solve everything. When you rely on the physically implausible that is religion not science. The religious undertone is confirmed when you see critics of renewables in effect accused of heresy.

The $85 per Mwh subsidy for wind power and commercial solar ignores the cost and additional emissions of inefficient backup. Back in 2014 when the LGC was $35 the RET Review found the cost of CO2 avoided was $59 per tonne. Maybe that's more than doubled at $85 per Mwh remembering that carbon tax only hit $24.15 per tonne. We're paying a premium price for a non-premium service.

If wind, commercial solar and timber waste burning are as great as supporters say they should renounce quotas and subsidies in favour of an emissions based approach. Don't get knocked over in the rush.

Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 20 September 2017 9:47:47 AM

Well here is the conclusive, peer reviewed scientific proof 'renewables' don't and won't 'cut it', not now or in the foreseeable future:

So there you have it. Either our moronic politicians accept these facts and come up with a new energy mix or we continue to be held to ransom by the ideological green mantra and suffer further from policy and action which does not meet the smell test.

Geoff

Posted by Geoff of Perth, Wednesday, 20 September 2017 9:53:32 AM

“We can have reliability and emissions reductions, if we are prepared to pay for them.We can have reliable and affordable power, if we don't have to pay for emissions reductions.We can have emissions reductions at lower cost, if we forgo reliability.”

It should be easy to spot the dysfunctional policy: emissions reductions.

It should be remembered that emissions reductions follow from Australia signing up to the Paris Accord, a politically correct agreement of the highest order. There is no scientific nor economic justification for implementing the Accord – as there is no empirical scientific evidence to substantiate the CAGW hypothesis on which it is based. Nor does signing the Accord make it mandatory to implement it.

It is tragic, but not surprising, that Australia has gone from having the cheapest electricity in the world to the dearest.

Why not surprising? Because implementing PC policies and acting in the national interest are mutually exclusive.

The tragedy is that our PM, being an acolyte of the high priest of political correctness, will continue to sit on his hands and wish fancifully for the continuing demise of coal-fired power -- while Australia’s increasing electricity prices hasten the decline of businesses and job numbers, and keep raising the cost of living. (It should be acknowledged that not all businesses suffer -- Geoff Carmody’s business thrives under such a ‘trilemma’.)